Trade Unions and the New Authorities

A Mouthful of Workers' Rights

AIM Belgrade, February 21, 2001

It seems that the Trade Unions have decided to demonstrate their real strength. Not giving the new authorities even the customary 100 days grace period, they are organising strikes all over the country: " Telekom Srbija", textile industry of Leskovac, municipal sewage services, kindergartens, schools. They are even threatening with a general strike, as if wanting to compensate for all they missed doing in the last ten years and rectify all they have been criticised for, primarily their sycophantic relation towards the regime.

Is there a better way for them to show that they care for workers and their rights than to organise a general strike and thus stop the Government of Serbia from adopting the new Law on Privatisation which will enable the "plunder of social property and leave 1.5 million workers jobless". According to them the best proof that the Government had such intentions was its proposal that in future not more than 10 percent of shares of enterprises which would undergo ownership transformation and additional 15 percent in the form of vouchers, would be distributed to workers, while the rest would be sold to foreigners.

According to the Law, under which since the arrival of new authorities three times more firms have applied for the accelerated privatisation process than in the four preceding years, workers would get 60 percent of shares on the basis of their past labour. In other words, they would get a majority package for each year of labour spent in a firm on paper and DM 400 in cash. The Trade Union leaders, as protectors of the working class, resented the new Law for "favouring foreign capital at the expense of the domestic one, as well as the fact that the workers who do not realise their right to shares would be at a disadvantage in relation to those who got these shares free of charge". "We shall not give up so easily our demand that workers' past labour should be recognised and evaluated", explained recently Slobodanka Brankovic, the SSS (the Alliance of the Trade Unions of Serbia) Vice-President.

Whether by coincidence or not, the SPS and Radical delegates to the Serbian Parliament offered similar arguments when it was deciding on repealing the existing Privatisation Law until the adoption of the new one. The old one envisaged the insider model of capital transformation. Same as they got the unreserved support of the state Trade Unions when adopting the Law on Privatisation back in 1997, now as delegates of the opposition in the new Parliament, representatives of the former regime had their support in opposing the amendments to that same Law.

Unfortunately, for the time being the Government abandoned the new solutions responding to the Trade Unions' demands that "Trade Unions' privatisation experts", as President of the SSS (one of three Trade Union headquarters) Milenko Smiljanic called them, to be consulted in the drafting of new Law. The Association of Free and Independent Trade Unions firmly demanded of the Government to urgently stop further privatisation according to the existing model because it "is based on unrealistic evaluation of property and plunder of workers and social property". However, it did not threaten with general strike in case its demand was not met. According to malicious sources the reason is that their until-yesterday President has become Minister in the new Government. The third Trade Union organisation "Independence" (Nezavisnost) demanded the withdrawal of the new law from parliamentary procedure, primarily because the "democratic procedure has been violated", but assessed that "this is not the time for strikes as they represent an abuse of justified workers' dissatisfaction".

Be that as it may, it turned out once more that representatives of the working class do not have the same stand regarding the key issues on the protection of worker's rights.

Surely, the adoption of a law such as the Law on Ownership Transformation requires the agreement of the so called social partners, in this case of Trade Unions and Chambers of Commerce. However, the new authorities can do it only after they first regulate the status of each trade union organisation, i.e. make them all equal or one more equal than the others under the law. Until now the SSS, which called itself the majority trade union, although its membership is very debatable, has always been the more equal one.

And not only that. Trade unions are very busy because they first have to regulate their mutual relations, such as the division of property, and only then demand to be treated as equal partners with the new authorities. Only then they would be able to agree which worker's rights should be protected and how. This protection should be devoid of any factional games because it is precisely in countries in transition that such games can prove dangerous for the worker's property and rights.

Examples from the neighbouring Hungary represent a good warning. Due to the lack of unity of their Trade Unions, their workers have lost all their resorts (which were nationalised), their jobs, their wages were cut and their trade union and worker's rights denied. Bad laws contributed to this by allowing foreign investors to demand of workers to work unspecified working hours, without holidays, vacations and the right to strike. All these rights were abolished by "skilful" seasonal employment which implied one-sided decision-making of managers.

Therefore, if they truly want to show their strength or at least correct some mistakes from the past, Trade Union organisations should join forces in the drafting of labour-related and social welfare laws. United, they could be of great help to the new Government in keeping their promise and starting the reforms. Such reforms could never be achieved without true privatisation.

And without that there will never be so much needed foreign capital, no re-launching of production, no better wages. Foreign capital doesn't go where it is eagerly wanted, but where it can fructify. Foreigners will not invest their funds in firms in which they risk shareholders with "paper rights" appearing one day as majority owners and opposing their plans to change production programme or lay-off surplus labour. Logic is simple, the one who brings money also wants to control it.

Those who, allegedly protecting workers' rights to free shares, slow down the inflow of foreign capital, are doing no good to their protégés, because domestic shareholders cannot fill the enterprise empty cash-boxes from their pockets. They cannot, even if they wanted to because in those same enterprises they earn just barely enough to survive and feed their families.

Trade Unions did not protect them from those who brought them in such a situation, but are now protecting them from those who, like Privatisation Minister Aleksandar Vlahovic, say that it would be better for "every worker to earn a decent salary in a firm which has a foreign investor as the majority owner, than to have worthless shares in their pockets". Anyway, in view of the Hungarian experience, it should be remembered that immediately after the foreign capital arrived some 1.8 million Hungarian workers lost their jobs, but around 1.5 million of them soon found another one, so that with its 300 thousand unemployed persons Hungary is currently among the countries with the lowest unemployment rate.

Or, another example: If it is possible to find in the world a car manufacturer interested in "Zastava", that will not be because of "Zastava" itself. Or because of our market. His interest will be the market of the entire region, while "Zastava" could be the centre of car production primarily because of its skilled labour which is, according to European standards, still cheap. However, in that case "Zastava" as a stake would also mean jobs for thousands of co-producers, i.e. for some hundred thousand people.

Privatisation is a beginning of all reforms and each transition is a painful process. Trade Unions have to realise this soon and stop dancing to the politicians' tune. Instead, they could substantially support these reforms by participating in the drafting of labour-related legislation and social policy according to European criteria. They will thus best protect the workers who, as economist Mirosinka Dinkic said, "were actually in a transition shock all these years, touching its bottom at the time of hyperinflation and should be aware by now that it is much better to have a good job and good wages in their pockets than worthless papers".

Tatjana Stankovic

(AIM)